U.S. Gold plan on supporting the 'serious'
games side of the ST over the coming months with several conversions
of S.S.I. titles. COLONIAL CONQUEST will be available 'with
enhanced graphics' and two further releases are WIZARDS CROWN
and RINGS OF ZILFIN. A new role-playing fantasy adventure is
PHANTASIE III – The Wrath of Nikademus. U.S. Gold also
promise an ST version of Broderbund's much acclaimed PRINT SHOP
to be released in September.
Reports from the Summer CES Show in the States
were that the amount of software for the ST is slowing down! Many of
the products shown have already been released in this country and
were being introduced in the States under licensing agreements.
Others of note that may come this way include SCAD a 2-D
drafting program with 16 memory pages at $99.95 and MasterCAD
from Venezuela(!!) which claims to convert any two-dimensional image
into 3-D. Electronic Arts had an enhanced version of their Music
Construction Set and Accolade promise a superb driving
simulator. Also on show from Atari was a credit size calculator with
the Atari symbol and name. Just a promotional item? Or is Jack
getting back to his roots!
Michtron U.K. (note the change from Microdeal)
have a couple of new utilities aimed at programmers. Those with Hard
Disk drives can try out M-CACHE which will help with the
speed and efficiency of the drives by holding the most recently
accessed sectors in memory, like a RAM disk, thus cutting search and
access time. For the less wealthy(!) STuff is a whole
collection of useful utilities which at first glance look like a
collection of public domain programs but which independent
assessment indicates is much more. Too many to list but Autoboot
programs, disk utilities, keyboard controllers and more are
included. It sells for £24.95. M-Cache is also £24.95.
Activision have now signed up Sierra
On-Line following their departure from Mirrorsoft. First two
titles released are KINGS QUEST III following on from the
earlier titles and SPACE QUEST which is an adventure in a
future time but still in the Sierra style. Both retail for £24.99 on
the ST.
Meanwhile back at CES a British company won the
prestigious Software Showcase Productivity Award. The company
are Precision Software and the product was SUPERBASE
PERSONAL. The CES judges praised the database for its 'very
visual' system offering a unique facility for co-ordinating pictures
and text. Apart from the award Superbase had the other distinction
of being the only database operating under GEM available in the U.S.
Glentop recently reduced the price of the GFA
BASIC Interpreter and GFA BASIC Compiler from £59.95 to £45.95 and
had a Special Summer Offer (which you might still catch) of three
free disks of public domain software. The price cut is intended to
introduce GFA to the home-user, for whom it is an ideal basic,
rather than the professional user. Glentop also have a new range of
GFA products coming. GFA VEKTOR is a 3-D graphics package
that fully integrates with GFA BASIC and there is an enhancement to
GFA Draft called GFA DRAFT PLUS. Further products include
GFA OBJECT for designing and manipulating 3-D objects and GFA
FLOAT which is an enhancement that provides access to the power
and precision of maths co-processors.
SUPRA 20Mb HARD DISK
Presumably you know the benefits of having a Hard
Disk drive for your ST? If not, you could check out the article in
Issue 26 in which Matthew Jones explained some of the pros and cons
of owning a Hard Disk.
At that time, only Atari's own Hard Disk was
available but now you can choose between the Atari drive, the
Triangle Drive from Eidersoft (although there have been rumours that
they may no longer be doing Hard Disks) and three different drives
from Supra, distributed in this country by Frontier Software Ltd.
Supra drives are easy to get hold of and their price has just been
reduced, so are they a good alternative to the Atari drive?
We recently had the opportunity to try a Supra 20 Mb
Hard Disk and were very impressed. It is much, much smaller than the
Atari drive (being 285mm x 137mm x 70mm) due the fact that it uses a
3½" disk rather than 5¼". Whilst it is not quieter in use, it is no
noisier than the Atari drive. It makes a different noise rather than
more or less noise. Connecting up is simply a matter of plugging in
to the ST and finding another mains plug for the power.
A number of utilities are provided for formatting,
partitioning, booting the drive and the like, all of which are easy
to use. Partitioning is optional but is available for up to four
'logical' drives which can be of any size you choose. All of these
work well and should cause you no problems. I wasn't able to test
any difference in speed of access between the Supra and the Atari
drive but when you have the fast access of a Hard drive are
milliseconds that important? The manual supplied is brief, but
contains all the information needed. Hard drives, really are simple
to use once you become accustomed to them.
One major factor in Supra's favour, is that, in
addition to the standard 20Mb drive, 40 Mb and 60Mb versions are
available if you need them (and can afford them!). Believe it or
not, it really is possible to fill up a 20Mb drive! ST programs are
bigger than you might think.
The other major consideration is the size. The Supra
drive really is neat and tidy and looks much more professional
hooked up to your ST. Reliability seems to be no problem. We had it
running for a couple of weeks with no problems and other users have
reported running them daily for six months or more. If you should
get any problems, Frontier will sort them out for you and try and
make sure that your precious data is preserved. You get a full 12
month guarantee.
With many items of hardware, the only question is
whether it works and continues to work. There seems little doubt on
either point with the Supra drives and they should certainly be
considered as a viable alternative to the Atari drive. A 20 Mb drive
will cost you £629.95 and if you need more storage you can have 40Mb
for £929.95 or 60Mb for £1799.95.
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